on 9/21/01 12:03 AM, Paris Margaritis at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Hey guys, I am seriously thinking of moving to Verizon DSL but I am
> worried about what security software I should be running when I am
> connected. My G4 will not be online all day, just in the evenings for
> regular surfing. Does anybody have any personal experience with
> software firewalls? Which software is the most effective in your
> opinion?
If you're on macos 9, it isn't something you really need to worry about (at
least in my experience). If you will have windows machines on the network...
Could be an issue, same with macos x...
MacOS x though ships with a pretty good bare bones firewall built in (there
is a utility out there called brickhouse which lets you customize it) but
even still it ships with most of the dangerous stuff turned off by default.
Basically a firewall stops people from coming into your computer through
your net connection, by blocking suspicious traffic or certain ports. A
hacker will use a "sniffer" program to ping the hell out of any connection
it can find, looking for open ports (ie on a computer setup for web surfing,
if traffic comes in on port 80 it gives it to the web server, on 110 the ftp
server, etc, etc or however you've got it setup). When they find one that is
vulnerable, they go after it and use security flaws in the OS (microsoft or
unix generally) to take over the machine or access its data.
But the classic macos just doesn't have a lot of the things hackers are
looking for when they are ping'in around. So you might get ping's
(especially from pc virus's looking to infect your computer) but they just
won't be able to do anything to your mac.
Like I said, MacOS X changes this, if you turn on certain features (like
letting people ftp or telnet or ssh into your computer) then it is
vulnerable, but these are turned off by default and there is already a
software firewall in place.
If you will be having others accessing your connection or will have a PC
hooked to your network, I'd think about forgoing the software firewall as
most decent home/SOHO routers come with them built in.
--
Michael Bryan Bell
http://homepage.mac.com/michael_bell/
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